The Architecture of the former Yugoslavia

On display at MoMA in New York is the architecture that emerged in Tito's former Yugoslavia between the 1950s and the 1980s. From the International Style to Brutalism

It’s been a long time since anyone talked about a page of post-war architecture that is in fact quite interesting, perhaps because to some extent it is peripheral to the current discourse, perhaps because it developed in a territory (the Balkans) that until less than twenty years ago was torn apart by a vicious war between different ethnicities and religious, motivated by an increasingly aggressive nationalistic fervour. The place finally doing it is MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, with Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948-1980, defined by the museum itself as “The first major US exhibition to study the remarkable body of work that sparked international interest during the 45 years of the country’s existence”.

Organized by Martino Stierli and by Vladimir Kulić, guest curator, the exhibition tells of a social and political system (the one built by Tito, president of the then Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) aimed at modernising the country, at developing the property market and the economy in general in order to improve the lives of Yugoslav citizens. The architectural landscape that arose from this, from the skyscrapers to the “social condensers”, is a manifestation of the radical diversity and hybridity that characterised the very soul of Yugoslavia.

Berislav Šerbetić and Vojin Bakić, Monument to the Uprising of the People of Kordun and Banija, 1979-1981, Petrova Gora, Croatia. Exterior view. (Photo Valentin Jeck, 2016, commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art)

Exploring the topic of large-scale urbanisation as well as technological experimentation and its application in everyday life, the exhibition presents the work of important architects, among themBogdan Bogdanović, Juraj Neidhardt, Svetlana Kana Radević, Edvard Ravnikar, Vjenceslav Richter and Milica Šterić. Tending towards the International Style and Brutalism, the architectural language of the former Yugoslavia also presents aspects that set it apart and arise from its own particular poetry. All you have to do is think of the countless commemorative monuments (about which, as it happens, there is a fascinating book by the Belgian photographer Jan Kempenaers entitled Spomenik, published in 2010 by Roma Publications) and of their poignant, solitary and silent visual power, in some cases rendered lyrical by an organic language that shapes the cement into forms similar to flowers and other elements from nature. Like the Jasenovac memorial, in Croatia, the work of Bogdan Bogdanović (winner in 2007 of the Premio Internazionale Carlo Scarpa per il Giardino). The exhibition, which brings together more than 400 pieces between drawings, models, photographs and documentary films, is accompanied by a catalogue with academic essays, new photographs by Valentin Jeck commissioned for the occasion and archival reproductions.

From 12 June to 1 October 2017 New York's MoMA (the Museum of Modern Art)...

14 June 2017

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